I've been getting into Twitter (under my usual moniker - randfish) more and more over time (despite only following a few friends and family), and lately, its been weighing on me that the service, despite its brilliance, rapid adoption and passionate fanbase, isn't yet pursuing revenue. That's OK - I think they probably have lots of very smart, talented, experience people thinking about the problem and taking action to prepare for it. However, I thought it might be fun to brainstorm some concepts publicly and recruit the smart SEO crowd to pitch in.

First off, here are the ideas I'd toss - I don't think they make good sense. Thumbs down to:

Third-Party Contextual Advertising - Google AdSense or YPN just don't excite me, and I think they'd undermonetize and be limited to only those folks who use Twitter on the web (and not through third party apps or mobile).

Broadcast Tweet Ads - Sending users a random ad tweet every 5, 10 or even 50 tweets isn't exciting and it's not targeted the way Twitter should be. Twitter knows something about everyone; leverage that if you're going to message your users.

Display Ads - For the same reasons as contextual advertising

Third Party Aps & APIs - I love that it's free now, and I think Twitter will be far more valuable by remaining completely free to users and open to developers.

Pay for Corporate Accounts - Can't prove you're a real person? Twitter charges for your corporate/brand account. It's an easy one (even if people set up lots of sock puppets to get around it, Twitter's sales/spam team can go find the valuable accounts), but it doesn't have the targeting value or the potential that some of the others do.

Pay for Followers - Twitter fans are going to get angry quickly if you auto-sign them up to follow a brand or person they don't know. I'd stay far away from this one.

Pay for Followed Links - Something tells me Google would be pretty quick to penalize Twitter and they probably don't want to make enemies with the search giant just yet. :-)

And here's some ideas I really like:

Keyword Purchases - Every time someone Tweets the word "SEOmoz," I, as an advertiser, want two things. First, I want those users recorded so I can message to them in the future and second, I want the word to automatically become a link pointing to the page of my choosing (probably a Twitter-specific landing page for PRO in our case).

Search Ads on Twitter Search - As Twitter search becomes more popular (and it will, not just for obsessed Twitterers, brand managers and reputation analysts, but for regular users and marketers and researchers, too), placing relevant ads in those searches becomes valuable. Better yet, you can combine Twitter searches with tweet history, so I could, for example, only show my ad to Twitter users who search for "SEO" and have previously twittered (or received twitters from those they follow) with my brand name.

Charging for Power Accounts - Your first 1,000 followers are free. After that, no one can follow you until you pay $50 a year (or some nominal, but affordable number). When you get to 5,000 or 10,000, the price goes up.

Subscribe Invitations from Advertisers - When I log into Twitter or reach my account page on the site, an overlay could indicate that some users have invited me to follow them. Those "invitations" could have 140 characters to say something clever and enticing enough to attract me and Twitter could target them based on my followers, followees and tweet history. There's a lot of targeting options for a brand manager seeking new followers.

Targeted Tweet Ads Based on Tweet History - Unlike the broadcast ad concept I didn't like above, these would rely on user history and profile to make them effective. If I've tweeted a combination of words a number of times or follow people who have, I'm an ideal candidate to receive a sponsored tweet every 20 or 50.

Opt-In Geo-Tweet Ads - You Tweet a location and advertisers can Tweet back (and appear in your mobile updates) with messaging. It's a pretty solid concept, although I worry that opt-in adoption rates would be low unless the advertiser quality controls were extremely high.

Pay to Opt Out of Ads - Don't want to receive Tweet ads or sponsored tweets (and maybe get some extra member features like a more robust timeline and maybe greater visibility or listing in some sort of Twitter user directory)? Pay $3 or $6 or $9 a month. It's a great extra revenue stream for those who'd (inevitably) complain about the ads.

Your turn - any good ideas for how Twitter should monetize? Any guesses as to which they'll adopt and when?

p.s. I recognize that many folks around the web have probably already voiced these ideas, and I've glanced at a few headlines on the topic, but thought I'd come at it independently without reading anything else first. If this were my job, I'd approach it much more systematically.

I think something the twittsters are wary of is the fact that their system is right on the verge (for the majority of users) of being a distraction more than a business tool. If you start charging for the ability to use the basic functions in twitter, it'll crash.

That being said, I like the chance to upgrade to a paid account once you hit X number of followers or followees.

I think they could also make some coin if they actually developed a premium app alternative that brought the power of twitter search to light for common users as well as access to more data concerning your activity on your account.

What about any user being able to send a 'premium tweet' that is only seen by their followers, but appears as the #1 tweet in their list for the next (say) 12 hours? Cost could be on a by-user-count/auction system.

It would mean that companies would still have to do generally 'good' tweets to build up followers, but Twitter would then get them to put their hand in their pocket when they have an announcement to make.

Hell, even I'd probably pay for a premium tweet from time to time, if I've just thought of something *really* funny.

Nice ideas, and I tend to agree about the what-not-to-do list. The Magpie tweets are already getting annoying, especially because they're essentially designed to trick people and look like regular tweets.

One area that I think has huge potential but is, admittedly, tricky, is Twitter's unique access to real-time data, especially news-cycle data. No news agency in the world can find out about something like an earthquake faster than Twitter does, and if they can find a way to tap into that collective intelligence and data-mine it, there could be real money in it.

1. Fine as long as your buying a trademarked brand name. I don't want the word "Voip" linked every time I mention it to a shitty Voip company I have no experience with and am not recommending since the link will make it appear that I am.

2. No idea why they don't do this already. Also no idea why there isn't a search bar ON my twitter homepage.

3. You want to charge me for who follows ME when I have ZERO control over who follows me and can't stop anyone from following me (unless I block them, which is ridiculous). Sorry, not happening. Try it and twitterclone.com will launch shortly thereafter.

4. No thanks to the spam.

5. Too complicated and would easily be annoying.

6. You're counting on local small businesses to get twitter when they don't get seo and ppc.

7. No issue with it, but it will likely kill their current explosive rate of adoption.

2 is their obvious and viable option. Premium accounts to let you do EXTRA things is an option. 1, 3 and 4 would open the floodgates for Twitter clones.

I like a lot of these ideas, and I think several of them change the fundamental attractiveness of Twitter. I think they've got lots of options and I appreciate that they're taking their time in figuring this all out.

There is a reason people enjoy Twitter so much and placing too many barriers in the way, or cluttering up their experience will drive them away just as quickly as they came.

Do I have a brilliant idea for monetization that hasn't been though of. Not yet anyway. But, just don't change my Twitter too much! I know they've got to make money and I trust they'll do so creatively without driving away their early adopters/biggest fans/advocates/etc...

That being said, what does the Fail Whale dream of at night? I bet it's something about that creepy little caterpillar that is threatening to steal the lime light!

You could offer people the ability to pay to be a featured among those someone is following, so that their picture is biggest and top among the tiny "following" pictures. The cost could vary based on the popularity of the person, and they would have control over whether or not they accept (maybe get a cut).

If I were the featured person being followed by SEOmoz for a bit, I might get a lot of targeted SEOs to look at my profile and url. If I were the feautured one of the great comedians on there, people just looking for a laugh might check out what I had to offer, etc...

Can't remember exactly where I read this, but one monetization strategy offered up that Twitter has the potential to become the mobile version of paypal, where if you were in a store with a particular product or service that you wanted to buy you could tweet

"p storename productname"

or something and if your credit card was hooked up to your Twitter account you'd buy the item on the spot without any hassle of waiting in line, etc...

A start-up here in Chicago called Txtful does that with SMS messages. You can send something like "netflix star wars" and do various e-commerce activities with just a few words. Seems like only a matter of time before we see that on Twitter.

I think Jane and I were talking about that on Twitter once regarding pizza places. It'd be great to have an account for your local place, tie it to PayPal or something and be able to send a tweet like:

- Micro-transactions can work if you have the right demographic; look at Asia, where the leaders in instant messaging like QQ monetize their services with customization, games linked to avatars and extra privileges. Unfortunately, at the moment Twitter has the wrong userbase for microtransactions. Kids & gamers will pay for microtransactions, not bloggers and online-savvy first adopters.

- Watch developments on http://twicco.jp/ the Twitter Groups/Community feature built by the Japanese Twitter team. A group/community stream of tweets is much more accessible to advertisers (more views, better segmentation)

- Adsense for Twitter. Twitter users with more than "X" number of page views get invited to the Adsense network. Opt-in to the advertisers you want to allow and then select ad frequency. One in every "Y" tweets of yours will be an ad. You share the revenue for any clickthroughs.

Twitter would do well to take learnings from YouTube. Just like YouTube, Twitter is:

hmmmm my favourite one of those? The keyword purchase... I love that idea, as long as the several Twitter clients supported it and didn't strip the links out when it received tweets.

There are several pitfalls, like every word that you tweeting being a link as the advertising market got large! But I'm sure there's ways of pulling that one off quite nicely and avoiding the disadvantages.

I love the Twitter as micropayment platform idea. It would be a great timesaver for me to tweet 'p Starbucks $80 - Tall Mocha' or whatever and then have my order and my receipt ready for me when I got to the register. I don't think we're in a headspace where the model would catch on like wildfire, though. Maybe in a few years.

I bet some people and companies would pay for the ability to fully customize their Twitter pages: additional links (with perhaps one that is not no-followed?), various rich content modules instead of a single static image, and custom layouts.

Offering access to analytics for one's Twitter page could be profitable, too.

While, as an advertiser, I can appreciate the idea of Keyword Purchases, I absolutely detest the idea as a user. Twitter turning my tweets into ads? No thanks, not unless they're going to share the revenue with me.

Even in that case, I should be able to choose who can use my account to advertise. I don't want keywords in my tweets turning into link ads for companies that I may not endorse.

Furthermore, as an advertiser, would you really want some who tweeted the word "SEOmoz" to have that word link to you if, for example, the full content of the tweet was "SEOmoz sucks!" I guess all publicity is good publicity, but I don't think you necessarily want that link, nor does that person want to give it to you.

Having to pay for more followers?! Surely power users are the soul of Twitter, by charging them you are picking on the people that made Twitter in the first place. Plus as sugarrae mentioned you can't control who follows you.

That would be like charging the main contributors in forums for the privelige. Or charging YouTube contributors for each view their video gets.

A good way to monetise would be selling the idea. If you've ever been to a festival (like Glastonbury) many of them often have huge text screens that you can text messages to. Twitter could sell their feeds and technology to events - ie. an SEO exhibition having an SEO tweet screen - the event would get the up-to-date feeling amongst the online community and twitter would get paid for the service.

Twitter is widely popular because it is free if you change that; you would see large drops in tweets.

I only see Twitter using Ad based monetization strategies such as flash intro pages and content based ad targeting. My biggest question; how much time does a person spend on the average twitter account page, to read 140 characters take about 5 seconds, which is hardly enough time to gain advertiser confidence.

Twitter is going to monetize the same way Google monetize: displaying relevant text ads (in this case 140 characters or less) to people who reference certain keywords in their tweets. They are going to charge advertisers to send little DM's to people who mention things related to their line of business. For example, I'm a furniture vendor, if someone says they need to buy furniture, I want to advertise to that person. Arguably, that person is further along in the conversion cycle than someone performing a search for "furniture" on Google. For more on "Twitter Paid Search," see my blog entry: http://inside.nikkoshops.com/twitter-is-the-next-paid-search-venue/. Thanks.

UPDATE - today's NYT has an article about Twitter and Facebook. Evan Williams says that Twitter plans to avoid making money from ads and instead it will charge businesses that use Twitter to talk to customers or sell products.

Twitter should partner with AT&T to sell their Twitter Tweet package and provide tweets at the same rate as text messages. Twitter must condition their users to pay for the service before the novelty wears off.

Agree with your thumbs down and think you have a couple of cool Thumbs up ideas. What was missing though are ideas linked to seeing twitter not as an ad medium but as a research medium.

Much like Twitter did during the presidential elections, companies could pay to have twitter set up real-time live feeds of any tweets that contain either the company's brand, category or competitor or any keword(s) for that matter.

A 24/7/365 day live research stream. If twitter could also find some way to overlay demographic/geographic filters -- it would be even better.

Brand spend millions a year on research that is little more than a point in time marker on reported consumer feelings. A Twitter proudct could be very valuable and highly profitable I'd think given that Twitter would build it once and simply reskin it for each brand.

i dont use the product but from a social media perspective being able to prove or brand your tweet as SEOmoz... and ensure that other branded tweets couldnt be setup such as SEOmaz or SEMmoz could be setup and your online brand tarnished

keyword ads are also a great option with this blog used as an example...

i know it might drive people nuts but setting up a script within blog responses for public facing articles that everytime someone types SEOmoz, it replaces it with a hyperlink to your PRO signup page.... or if you type tweeter, it replaces it as @randfish...?

Absolutely add advertising to search requests. The other easy one is to create a classified section (classified and search page views are the only two categories pulling over $40 cpm -- everyone else gets <$1 cpm).

I think Twitter should create a kind of Craigslist on Twitter. Twitter posts even look like cryptic little Craigslist postings to me.

Nice thoughts, but I think there's also money in one sector you didn't mention: the mobile phone. Many twitteres tweet using text-messages. I have to admit I don't know exactly what costs are involved currently and if it's possible to get @replies to your mobile (at least here in Austria it isn't possible to get updates but tweeting using text messages is free ... depending on your mobile contract).

The first two things that came to my mind were similar to your "pay to opt out of ads" pay 3$ a month and you won't get the daily ad-text-message - or to charge an extra cent (or something) for each mobile tweet. But I'm sure there are many more far-out monetising strategies where the mobile phone is involved ...

Twitter's recent hire of Rael Dornfest — acquiring through him the intellectual property of both Stikkit and I Want Sandy — suggests other tangents they may be considering. See: http://www.valuesofn.com/blog/2008/11/fork-in-road.html

I like all of your ideas a lot, aside from perhaps the one about charging for power accounts. This seems to be detrimental to people who have no control over the popular account: those who want to follow the account as well as to the account's owner. This is probably more incentive for the account holder to pay up, but that seems to border on negative reinforcement: the incentive is to pay up to avoid hurting or pissing off potential fans.

Forcing accounts to pay to follow more than a certain number of people would cut down on the spam accounts that follow 3,000 members and tweet about weight loss pills... although that trend has slowed a lot since Twitter removed followed Biography links.

I think that it is going to be very difficult for Twitter to make money. They probably know it to. It is the reason they haven't tried to monetize it yet.

I imagine it is refreshing to think in these economic times that a company that offeres a service that is not really necessary will be able to break out and make money.

I"m sure a lot of companies that had billions of dollars for marketing, research, and advertising would like to talk with the people that are going make Twitter a economically viable company in the next year or two. Because as I read the news lots of these companies are going under.

Just because we all use Twitter and to some extent enjoy it doesn't mean that Twitter can make money. I for one won't be paying them any money. I guess some others are willing to. But I would be willing to bet that not many will actually follow through. If I had money to spend on my blog, I would spend it to get onto the first page of Google before I would ever think that spending it on Twitter would bring me the same results.

Follower limitation would drive people to alternative sites. How about a limitation on # of people you can follow (how can you follow 1000 people right?) That would also solve a lot of bandwith cost failure issues and spammy follow attempts by people who only follow you to be able to get you to follow their spammy messages.

I think the paypal ideas are great. Twitter has talked so much about not charging users for anything with such convinction that if they went back on that idea and started charging power users, people would leave in droves.

I think the Paypal idea has real merit. I already feel that so many people on Twitter or using it to only sell products or sell themselves and their ideas. If Twitter could become a real tool, a real way to get things done better, then they would be as good as gold.

That's a whole lot of good ideas there Rand. I do wonder though when such measures will start to creep in as it's got to happen soon surely?

It will be interesting to see how commerce adopts it too, with such an obvious route to market I think the early adopters could do very well (before we get the first excessive instances of twit-spam)...